


Even in Death My Only Thoughts Are of You...

by AllHallowsEve



Series: Wincest Colored Glasses [23]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dean stuck in the spirit realm, Fear of Death, Love Confessions, M/M, Pre-Slash, Wincest - Freeform, ouija board usage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 11:31:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15142160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllHallowsEve/pseuds/AllHallowsEve
Summary: Dean is in a coma.  His spirit is roaming the hospital and thinks he has found a hunt.  Sam is desperate to save his brother, but John finds a way to do just that.Season 2 episode 1 as seen through Wincest Colored Glasses.





	Even in Death My Only Thoughts Are of You...

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbeta'd as always. Please be sure to point out any mistakes so I can fix them and make this better for everyone.

_Dean’s first word upon waking after the accident was “Sam.”_

Sam ran into Dean’s room as soon as he was able.  He stood in shock, unable to comprehend exactly what he was seeing.  His brother was hooked up to so many different machines and didn’t even seem to be breathing on his own.  Sam had been afraid before.  When Dean had the heart attack and the doctors had said for sure he was dying, Sam had felt ill in his very soul, but something made him sure he could find a cure that time. 

But this, part of Dean’s injuries were sustained by psychic demon attack.  Could those kinds of things even be cured?  Sam was struggling to breathe around the fear that had welled up inside his chest.  Once the doctor came in and used the word “if” about whether Dean would wake up or not, Sam couldn’t process it.  It was too big, too much.  He felt he might break apart if he stayed there much longer, so Sam left the room to go talk to his dad.

_Dean was so frustrated.  It was bad enough that no one in the hospital could see him or hear him, and it was quite a shock to come back to his room and find his own body lying flat in the situation it was in, but he just knew that Sam could fix this, could hear him somehow, the kid was psychic after all.  But Sam didn’t seem to be able to tap into any ghost whispering mojo at all.  Dean had never felt so impotent in his life._

Sam sat beside his father’s bed and described everything the doctor had said about Dean’s condition.  Sam was not happy about any of it.  He told his dad “If the doctors won’t do anything, then we’ll have to.  That’s all.”

“I don’t know.  I’ll find some…”  He took a breath and thought for a moment, felt determination flood through him. He continued, “Hoodoo priest and lay some mojo on him.”

As the phrase left his mouth, his eyebrows raised.  He got a sudden feeling of déjà vu or like a chill went up his spine.  Those words didn’t sound like something he would say.  They sounded like something straight out of Dean’s mouth.

But before he could follow that thought, his father spoke up.  He sounded like he was trying to prepare Sam for the worst.  Sam’s temper flared.  He lashed out asking if his dad expected them to just sit around with their thumbs up their asses.

John tried to calm his youngest, telling him he would check under every stone, but then immediately asked, “Where’s the Colt?” 

Sam’s heart grew cold.  He felt bitter hatred for the man in the bed in front of him.  He asked in a disbelieving contemptuous tone, “Your son is dying, and you’re worried about the Colt?”

John explained to Sam that it wasn’t only them hunting the demon, but the yellow eyed bastard might be hunting them too.  And that the Colt might be the only thing that kept them safe.  Sam told his dad that it was in the trunk and that the car had been towed.

Sam had already gotten Bobby to go take care of the car and everything in it and he informed John of that fact once his dad began barking orders about it.  His dad instructed him to go meet up with Bobby and get the Colt and then ask Bobby to get a bunch of stuff on a list he handed Sam, explaining that it was all for protection.

Sam stopped in the doorway on his way out, and asked John if he knew anything about what the demon had meant when he said he had plans for him and for children like him, but John denied knowing anything.

_Dean stood against the wall, listening to the conversation between the two other Winchesters, in frustration.  Once Sam left, he looked at his father, knowing John couldn’t hear him, but needing to vent anyway, “You sure know something.”_

_He hated the idea of John hiding something that important from Sam.  Dean believed Sam had a right to know what was going on, since he was in the middle of the mess in the first place.  But John, believing in his own infinite wisdom, was choosing to keep them in the dark yet again._

Sam couldn’t leave the hospital until he had checked in on Dean again.  He scooted a chair as close to the side of the bed as the legs would allow.  He didn’t know what to do and hated feeling so powerless yet again watching his brother unconscious.  Tears began to flow.  He had tried to keep them at bay but he was exhausted and still hurting from his own lesser injuries.  He reached out and almost touched Dean’s hand, where it lay motionless on his leg.  Sam felt like it was forbidden.  He would never do it when Dean was conscious, but he wanted to offer some kind of comfort.  Let Dean know somehow that he was there.  So he gave that one small concession to himself.  He took Dean’s hand in his own and felt the callousness of his fingertips from the years of weapon use.  He touched where the oxygen monitor was on his index finger and wondered what Dean would think of Sam touching him in that way. 

He was sure Dean would call him a perv and just make a joke, thinking Sam was weak and needy because he was worried about Dean.  He hoped that was all Dean would think.  But there was so much more that touching his hand this way brought up in Sam.  He longed to be able to hold Dean’s hand for real, but only if Dean wanted that too, which would never happen.

Sam reached up and traced his fingers across Dean’s forehead.  He moved along the ridge of Dean’s eyebrow and touched feather soft along the ragged angry cut that tore down from his hairline towards his brow.

He quickly jerked his hands away as he felt someone enter the room, but when he looked over his shoulder there was no one there.

_Dean walked into his room and found Sam sitting with him.  He made a jerk as if he heard Dean come in, but Sam’s eyes flew right past where Dean stood so he knew that must have just been his imagination.  “Damn it Sam, why can’t you hear me?”_

Sam took one more longing look at Dean and said, “I have to leave to run an errand for Dad, but I’ll be back to check on you as soon as I can okay?”

_Dean watched as his brother left the room, feeling lost and alone._

When Sam looked at Dean’s precious Baby, twisted and mangled even more than his brother, it broke Sam’s heart.  He knew Dean would be so upset if he could see it right now. 

Bobby tried to convince Sam that there was nothing to salvage from the mess, but Sam wasn’t having it.  Sam knew that when Dean got better he would want to fix the car.  Sam knew down to his bones that this car meant everything to his brother, and he wasn’t about to let Dean lose that.  His brother had lost so much already in his short life and he refused to even contemplate letting him lose his prize possession.

Bobby listed out how there was nothing to fix, that every part of this car was ruined, barely even any parts worth salvaging.  Sam looked sternly at the older man across the roof of the car and said, “Now, listen to me, Bobby.”

The pain of seeing Dean at death’s door yet again, of not knowing how he was going to save him this time, of being so scared he would never again see the green eyes he loved so much staring back at him, it all weighed so heavy on his soul.  He didn’t realize it, but all that heaviness came out in his next sentence.  “If there’s only one working part, that’s enough.  We’re not just gonna give up on…”

He couldn’t continue the sentence, but luckily he didn’t have to.  Bobby could see what he had always seen in the Winchester brothers, absolute extreme devotion to each other.  He knew Dean had looked after Sam all their lives and that now Sam was trying to do the same for his big brother.  And he could tell Sam was barely holding on.  So he assured the kid he understood and that he would take care of it for them.

Sam handed the list John had given him over to Bobby and explained why his dad had said he wanted it.  Bobby looked confused.  Sam called him on it and asked him directly what was going on.

_Dean stood and watched as John sat by Dean’s bedside silently for nearly an hour.  Dean couldn’t take it anymore and began talking to John in spite of knowing he couldn’t hear a thing. “Come on dad, you gotta help me.”_

_Dean told John that he needed to get better. He said he needed to get back in his body.  Dean was so confused.  His father hadn’t called anyone for help, hadn’t even tried to come up with any kind of plan.  John hadn’t done or said anything the entire time Dean had been watching._

_Dean began to berate his father, saying with agony in his voice, “I’ve done everything you have ever asked me.  Everything! I’ve given everything I’ve ever had.  I stood by you and let Sam leave, and stayed with you.  I could have left too.  I could have had a different life, but I stayed, even though I wanted to go with Sam.  I stayed.  I have given up everything for you.  Now you’re just gonna sit there and you’re gonna watch me die?  What the hell kind of father are you?”_

_It hurt Dean’s soul to talk like that to his father, even though he knew he couldn’t hear him, the years of training to listen to his dad, respect his dad, swallow whatever his dad said as gospel, it was so hard to fight against that indoctrination.  But Dean was so hurt, so hurt by watching his father sit there and do nothing._

_A low rumbling could be heard out in the hallway and Dean went to check it out.  His hunter’s instincts took over when he realized that his father didn’t see or hear a white ethereal form blow by in the hall as Dean stepped out._

_Dean followed the thing around the hallways until he heard gasping coughs from a room nearby.  He watched in horror as a woman lay choking on the floor.  He couldn’t get anyone to hear him or give any help himself.  So he just had to watch in as the woman died in front of him._

_Dean waited impatiently for his brother to get back.  He knew Sam was the only hope he had to get back in his body and fight whatever monster was floating around the hospital killing people.  All thoughts of his own mortality temporarily faded into the background when a monster was around._

Sam walked into his father’s room and when John asked him why he was quiet, Sam threw the gear he had been carrying down on John’s bed in anger.  “You think I wouldn’t find out?”

John questioned what he meant.  Sam continued, “That stuff from Bobby, you don’t use it to ward off a demon, you use it to summon one.” 

Sam accused John of planning to bring the demon here to have some kind of stupid macho showdown. When John confirmed that he had a plan, Sam exploded, accusing him of caring more about killing the demon than the fact that Dean was dying. 

He berated John screaming at him about the obsession being more important than saving Dean and John rebuffed it saying the plan was to help Dean.  He then deflected by telling Sam that he thought it was Sam’s obsession too, to kill the demon.

_Dean stood by helplessly, begging them to stop, to not do this right now._

John began yelling back at Sam, accusing Sam of begging to be a part of the hunt. That if Sam had done his job and killed the thing when he had a chance, that none of this would have happened.  Sam exclaimed that it would have killed John too, but his father said at least Dean would have been awake right now.  Sam told him to go to hell.  John yelled at him that he never should have taken Sam along on the hunt in the first place, that he knew it was a mistake. 

_That drove Dean over the edge.  He yelled “I said shut up!” and lashed out in anger, his arm hitting a glass full of water, on the rolling table near the bed._

The glass flew off the table and crashed to the ground, drawing both Sam and John’s attention away from the fight.

_Dean began to feel a pull, a tug on his insides that felt like horrible cramps and like his intestines and lungs were being yanked out through his back, he fell to his knees in confusion, his visage blinking in and out of phase._

A commotion from down the hall pulled John and Sam’s attention away from the broken glass as they realized something was happening in the direction of Dean’s room.  John nodded to Sam to go check it out.

Sam ran down the hall and it was like he hit a glass wall as soon as he got to Dean’s door.  His heart shattered as he watched hospital staff work on his brother, who lay flat-lining not ten feet in front of where Sam stood clinging to the doorframe.  Tears filled Sam’s eyes and emptiness filled his soul as he watched helplessly as the man he desperately loved, desperately needed to save, fought for life and there was nothing he could do to help.

_Dean came up behind Sam, watched in horror at what was happening to his own body.  Then he saw the white wispy figure hovering over his prone form and Dean launched himself into the room yelling, “Get the hell away from me. Stay back!”_

_He got right up next to the thing and shouted “I said get back!”_

In that instant, Sam heard an echo of Dean’s voice somewhere in the ether.  He stared in confused uncertainty at the tableau in front of him, unsure what to believe.  Was it just his intense desire to save his brother that caused him to hear his voice in his head?

_Dean grabbed at the thing, which growled and threw him backwards into the wall just out of reach from Sam.  It turned and looked at Dean before flying out of the room._

Suddenly much to Sam’s amazed relief, the nurse told the doctor that there was a pulse.

_Dean followed on the thing’s tail as swiftly as he could but he lost it._

Sam let go of the wall and breathed the first real air he could feel in his lungs since realizing his brother was coding.  Tears glistened in his eyes as he took in the still form of his brother, thankfully, for now at least, no longer in immediate jeopardy.

Sam stood motionless out in the hallway staring into the room.

_Dean walked up to his little brother and said “Don’t worry, Sammy. I’m not going anywhere.”  He insisted he would get the monster before it got him._

_Dean talked through the logistics of the case aloud the same way he would have if he had been working the hunt with his brother.  He knew Sam couldn’t hear him, but it made him feel better, more connected with Sam by doing so.  He longed to reach out and touch Sammy, his heart ached that Sam was going through this, not knowing what was happening with Dean._

Sam turned to look in the direction where Dean stood.  Something deep within him telling him that there was more to what was happening than what he could see.

_Dean went in search of the monster, or for any clues as to what might be happening here in the hospital.  Before he had made any progress he heard a woman screaming, asking if anyone could see her.  As soon as he rounded a corner she came into view and he called to her, asking if she could see him.  She confirmed she could and he told her to calm down._

_He found out her name was Tessa and introduced himself as well. She asked him what was happening to her.  He took her to find her own room where just like Dean’s body was waiting for him, hers was as well, hooked up to just as many machines as his. He explained that if his theory was correct, they were both spirits of people who were close to death.  He assured her that if they held on long enough for their bodies to get better, then they would snap right back into their bodies and wake up._

Sam and John made up after Sam explained that he had sensed something close to him, experienced something that felt like Dean.  He asked his father if he thought that was even possible and John assured him that anything was possible.  John even promised his younger son that he wouldn’t hunt the demon until he knew Dean would be okay.  Sam left saying that he had to go pick something up.  He was determined to find out if he was crazy or if he really had felt Dean near him.

_Dean and Tessa walked the halls.  He asked her why she seemed to be taking everything so well.  She told him that she felt like whatever was going to happen was fate, so it was out of her hands.  He informed her in no uncertain terms that, “That’s crap.”_

_He stared at her, thinking about all that he and Sam had been through, how many things they had fought and gone up against, that seemed nigh near impossible. The first time he was supposedly dying, he had felt the way Tessa did.  But his beloved Sam proved him wrong.  Sam had saved Dean, even when Dean had felt he didn’t deserve it.  And he was so thankful.  He had gotten almost a year with Sam back in his life and he didn’t want to waste one more second away from that man._

_Dean insisted, “You always have a choice. You can either roll over and die, or you can keep fighting, no matter what.”_

_At that moment he heard another emergency happening farther off in the hospital.  He told Tessa to wait there and he took off in the direction of the commotion.  He stormed into a room where a small child was dying while the hospital staff tried desperately to save her.  The wispy monster was hovering over the child and put its ethereal hand into her brain.  Dean called out for it to leave her alone and the thing vanished into thin air.  Instead of the girl coming out of the emergency as Dean had though, she died._

_Dean had no idea what the difference had been, but one of the nurses said, “At least she’s not suffering anymore,” which was his only clue to what might have changed._

Sam stepped quietly into Dean’s room, holding a paper bag with what he hoped would be the way he might connect with what he was feeling around him.  He walked over to stand beside the bed, looking down at his brother.  Dean looked so pale and frail.  He hated seeing his brother that way.  Growing up, Dean had always seemed almost invincible to Sam, the way he threw himself into any situation, leaping well before ever looking.

When he thought of Dean, his big brother had always seemed larger than life, even though Sam had four inches on him now, much to Dean’s own chagrin.  Dean wasn’t supposed to be here, dying.  They had already stopped this from happening once.  Sam felt like crying, hadn’t really stopped feeling that way since finding out the potential of what might happen to Dean. 

Sam sighed heavily.  He had to stop this line of thought.  He was here with a purpose and he needed to see if his theory might be right. 

He said, “Hey, I think maybe you’re around.  And if you are, don’t make fun of me for this, but, um…” 

He looked down at what was in the bag, knowing Dean would indeed make fun of him given half the chance.  He explained to Dean that this was one way they could talk, and he pulled out a Ouija board.

_Dean stood beside his own bedside, arms crossed and groaned skeptically, “Oh, you gotta be kidding me.”_

Sam went and sat on the floor cross-legged in the open space near the foot of Dean’s bed.  Sam looked around the room, feeling nervous and scared of what would happen if it didn’t work.  He had to believe it would though, he just knew what he had felt earlier was Dean.  He took a deep breath and asked Dean if he was here. 

_Dean groused and complained saying he felt like he was at a slumber party and that he just knew it wasn’t going to work.  But he was at his wits end so he sat across from Sam, mirroring his motions of putting his hands on the opposite side of the planchette._

Sam’s mouth formed an ‘o’ of surprise and he gasped excitedly when the triangle shape began to move around the board, stopping when it reached the word yes.

_Dean looked up at his brother in surprise, it had worked, he couldn’t believe it.  He felt like he actually might stand a chance now._

Sam burst into relieved laughter, tears threatening to overtake him.  His throat was thick when he said, “Oh, it’s good to hear from you, man. It hasn’t been the same without you, Dean.”

_Even in the other plane of existence, Dean couldn’t admit to what those words meant to his heart. To know that Sam missed him, and needed him, it was everything Dean could allow himself to want.  He deflected the emotional weight of it by saying, “Damn straight.”_

_He focused everything he could muster on moving the wooden pointer around the board, explaining to Sam that he was on a hunt and that it was a reaper._  

Sam asked if it was after him.

_Dean had to indicate yes that it was._

Sam’s voice was deep and fearful when he said, “If it’s here naturally, there’s no way to stop it.”

His heart heaved a shocked beat, the elation from just mere moments before gone in the panic of what this news meant. 

_Dean hung his head and with his voice in a gravelly whisper, said, “Yeah, you can’t kill death.”_

Sam began to say, “Man, you’re, uh…”  He couldn’t bring himself to finish.

_Dean did it for him. “I’m screwed, Sam.”_

_Dean watched his brother’s face, knowing his brother wouldn’t want to accept this news.  Sam had refused to give up the last time Dean was dying and it had worked, but he wasn’t sure his brother’s big brain could find an answer to this one.  He worried what would happen to his brother once he was gone.  Would he begin living a hunter’s life with John?  Both of them so hell bent to kill the demon that they would run in headlong towards their own ill fated endings?  Or would they end up hating each other without Dean there to intervene?  Dean didn’t want to even think about Sam being in the world without him there to protect his baby brother.  It was his one job, his one reason for living.  All this flashed before his eyes as he watched his brother take in the weight of Dean’s impending demise._

Sam started shaking his head, repeating suddenly, “No, no, no, no.”

He stood up and walked away from the board saying emphatically, “There’s got to be a way.” 

Sam circled the floor and he dug into his memory and then said, “Dad will know what to do,” as he walked out of the room.

He headed straight into John’s room, but came to a surprised halt when his eyes beheld an empty bed.  John was nowhere to be seen.

Sam got his father’s journal and went back to Dean’s room, sitting on the edge of his brother’s bed as he had so often as a kid, whenever Dean would want to sleep in but Sam would be excited about some new bit of knowledge he wanted to share.

_Dean walked over to stand next to the bed and watch his brother search through the journal. He said in a gruff voice, full of raw emotion, “Thanks for not giving up on me Sammy.”_

_Dean watched the man he loved with all his heart, search and worry over what to do. He knew if anyone could find a way to deal with a Reaper, it would be Sam, with his brilliant genius brain._

_He read along in the journal over Sam’s shoulders until he saw something that pissed him off.  He walked out of the room with a determination built from sheer anger. He marched straight to the room where he and Tessa had first seen her body laying in a coma just like his.  But what he found when he got there was just Tessa, dressed all in black sitting quietly waiting for him._

_He confronted her about the fact that he just read that Reapers can change human’s perceptions, looking any way they want.  She explained that because this area was her domain she could also make him see anything she wanted too, like the mother and her body._

_He asked her why she was toying with him, what she wanted.  And she explained she just wanted to tell him death is nothing to fear.  She told him it was his time to go. She reached out and touched his cheek.  A cold void caught hold of his insides making him gasp, as she told him he was living on borrowed time already._

_The only thing that ran through his mind was Sam._

Sam stood beside Dean’s bed, feeling lost and hopeless.  He called out to his brother asking if he was here.  He didn’t get any answer in return.  He had found nothing in his father’s journal that would help but he told Dean he wouldn’t give up, as long as Dean kept fighting.

His voice was forlorn when he said, “I mean, come on, you can’t…”

He looked down and tried to put a light tone in his voice, “You can’t leave me here alone with Dad.   We’ll kill each other.  You know that.”

Sam’s voice broke when he said, “Dean, you gotta hold on.” 

Tears filled his eyes, his throat getting thick with emotion as he continued, “You can’t go, man, not now.  We were just starting to be brothers again.”

His voice shook and he was barely holding himself together.  The thought of losing Dean, it hurt so badly, ached deep within his soul.  He could only manage a whisper as he asked, “Can you hear me?”

He could tell something was wrong.  There was no movement on the Ouija board at all.  The room felt empty in a way it hadn’t since this entire mess began.  Sam was truly scared.  He knew he was losing Dean and he had no idea where his dad had gone and no idea how to help. 

He looked at his brother lying helpless and dying and began to cry. 

_Dean asked Tessa to cut him a break.  She told him that bargaining was stage three of the process.  He turned and looked at her and told her his family was in danger. That they were in the middle of a war and that they needed him, but she insisted his fight was over._

_She told him that he wasn’t the first soldier she had plucked from the battlefield, and that all soldiers feel the same, that they are necessary to ensure victory.  But they were wrong and so was he._

_Dean said, “My brother, he…” He stuttered, unable to think of Sam without his heart convulsing, “He could die without me.”_

_She calmly said “Maybe he will, maybe he won’t.  Nothing you can do about it.”_

_Those words haunted Dean.  Never in his life had he faced the option of not fighting and giving everything he had to keep Sam safe.  The thought of leaving his baby brother unprotected, especially with the yellow eyed demon having plans of some kind for Sam.  The thought he wouldn’t be there to have Sam’s back, the idea of having to trust John, with his precious brother’s safety, it ate at Dean’s mind and left him feeling bereft._

_Dean made up his mind, he wasn’t going with Tessa, no matter what.  He would find a way to be there for Sam, for his family.  He told her he refused to go._

_She informed him she couldn’t make him come with her.  But she assured him that he wasn’t getting back in his body, that if he chose to stay he would be here for years, disembodied, scared._

_Dean’s lip quivered and his eyes got big as she cautioned that over the decades it would drive him mad, that he could even turn violent._

_He didn’t understand.  He asked her what she meant and she explained that this was how angry spirits are born.  That they can’t let go, they can’t move on, that by choosing to stay, he was about to turn into one of the same things that he hunts._

_He didn’t know what to do.  He would be no use to his family as some crazed ghost.  But it just wasn’t in him to give up and go with her.  He needed to talk to Sam, so badly he ached for him, but he didn’t want to put this heaviness on Sam.  His little brother was carrying too much already._

Sam whispered, “Dean, I love you. You can’t leave me.  Not like this, not without knowing how I really feel about you.  I love you so much, too much, in a way that is wrong and bad and I don’t know what to do about it.  But I need you to know.  If you are leaving anyway, I need you to know the truth.  I have been in love with you since I realized what love was.  You have been my whole world and that is the reason I left for Stanford, to get away from you so that you wouldn’t be poisoned by the badness inside of me.  I don’t know if you can hear me, I hope if you can that you won’t die hating me.  But I need you to know, you are everything, you have always been everything to me.” 

He took a ragged breath, eyes flicking between Dean’s face and the planchette, watching for any sign Dean was there with him.  “I need you to know how much I appreciate everything you have done, everything you have given up for me, how much you have defended me and protected me.  I never told you, but you are my hero and always have been.”

_Dean collapsed on the bed, sitting with his back to Tessa, not wanting to face his choice, not wanting to face the reality of the situation.  Tessa sat down behind him and reached out, rubbing gently across his shoulders.  She said, “It’s time to put the pain behind you.”_

_He asked her in a fearful whisper where he would go.  She told him she couldn’t give that away.   She informed him that it was time to decide, one way or the other, he had to make that choice and there would be no going back later.  He knew he couldn’t leave without seeing Sam one more time.  He was about to tell her he had to see his brother and then he would decide, but the lights began to flicker and eerie noises sounded from far away.  Tessa turned towards the wall and a dark ominous cloud began to pour from one of the air vents, she started screaming saying “No, you can’t do this!  Get away!”_

_But then the cloud roiled its way up and inside her, taking her over.  She turned to Dean with yellow eyes and said “Today’s your lucky day, kid.”_

_She reached up and put her palm forcefully against Dean’s forehead and he felt an intense shock and a pulling at his soul._

A moment later Dean gasped and woke up back in his body.  Sam was standing over him and cried out “Dean!” in shock.

Sam turned and began yelling for help.

When the doctors came in and removed all the tubing so that Dean could breathe on his own, Dean informed Sam he had no memory at all of what had happened.  Sam was not sure if he was relieved or disappointed that Dean didn’t know what Sam had confessed. 

Sam told Dean everything that he knew about the Reaper being after him and what had happened since he had slipped into the coma, leaving out his confession.  None of it rang any bells for Dean whatsoever.

Dean didn’t remember anything but he knew that something was wrong, he had a horrible pit in his stomach and told Sam about it.  Before they could discuss what it might be, there was a knock at the door and John stood smiling down at Dean, asking him how he was feeling.

Sam started in on John, asking him where he was and telling him he didn’t believe that he hadn’t gone after the demon when John denied it.

Dean begged them not to fight.  John stepped into the room and told Sam he didn’t want to fight.  That he had done his best and just didn’t want to fight anymore.  Sam was taken aback by his father’s tone.  It seemed like John was about to cry.  Sam knew something was wrong but John denied it.  Said he was just tired and asked Sam if he would get him some coffee.

Dean knew something was bothering his dad. Knew he had sent Sam out so that they could talk privately.  John had been doing that their whole lives and Sam never caught on.  Dean asked John what it was. 

John told him that every time he would come home from a hunt when Dean was little, he would be just wrecked and torn up and when he would come home, Dean would walk up to him, and put his hand on John’s shoulder and look him in the eye and would say, “It’s okay, Dad.”

Dean could tell his dad was having a hard time.  He was on the verge of tears and it was tearing Dean up inside.  His dad never showed this kind of emotion, never.    Then John told him he was sorry, that Dean shouldn’t have had to say that to him, he should have been saying that to Dean.  John told Dean he put too much on his shoulders and made him grow up too fast.  He admitted Dean took care of Sammy and took care of John.   He told Dean that he did all that and never complained, not once.

Dean didn’t know what was happening, but he was scared to death.  His father began to cry and told him that he just wanted to make sure Dean knew he was proud of him.  Dean even asked him, if it was really John talking.  John laughed a little and told him it really was him talking.

Dean told his dad he was scaring him, that he didn’t know why he was telling him all this.  Tears began forming in Dean’s eyes, that pit he had been feeling in his stomach was now a cold bottomless cavern of dread. 

John told him not to be scared but that he needed him to take care of Sam, and then he leaned over and whispered to Dean a secret he had been carrying around for a while about his youngest son.  Dean looked up at him in shocked horror, as John turned and left the room. Dean was left feeling like he had just slipped through into a nightmare as he sat alone trying to figure out what to do with what John had just told him.

Sam was walking back towards Dean’s room when something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye.  He turned and dropped the coffee he was holding as he ran to his father’s side where he had collapsed in a room off the hall.  Sam yelled for help and then as the hospital staff came and moved John to work on him Sam went to Dean to tell him what happened. 

Sam helped Dean get up and find their way to the station where the medical staff was working frantically to revive John.  Sam held Dean’s arm tightly tears filling his eyes.  The boys watched in disbelief as the doctor called the time of death out, the words echoing hollowly around the room.

**Author's Note:**

> Real life got in the way big time this past week. I apologize for how long it has taken to get this story up on here. Work and depression were both kicking my ass. Work is still non stop but I was able to climb out of my dark place long enough to get this finished. I hope you enjoyed what I did with it.
> 
> On to the next...


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